Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by coberst

Turtle

Thanks for the heads up. I have checked with my favorite library and they do have a copy of this book. I shall check it out in the next few days and join in.

Roger that & welcome. This is going to take all the critical thinking & thinkers that I can muster. If the library has both books, Synergetics & Synergetics 2, I recommend you check them both out together as, according to the authors, they comprise one integral work. Don't worry if you can just get one however, as the online version combines them.

Just so, I have brought us up to the first 'regular' section in volume I, however I see that Synergetics 2 includes material intended to go before that first section (section 100.00:Synergy). In keeping with my strategy in this thread to follow Bucky's lead, the next reading assignment I have set for myself et al is the section in Synergetics 2 titled 'Humans in Universe'. Here it is online: >> R. Buckminster Fuller's SYNERGETICS

This section contains some of Fuller's nomenclature without definition, however, as you will find, he ultimately leaves nothing to chance or speculation. Strip down, plunge in, and dare to be naive.

[Turtle]

The following copyright notice appears on the third 'page' of the online edition of Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking.
Copyright

Originally Posted by Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

Synergetics is copyrighted © 1997 by the Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller.

All rights reserved. Reproduction or use of text or pictorial content in any for profit manner is prohibited without express permission.

Implicit in the notice is permission to reproduce and/or use text or pictorial content for non-profit use. I declare my reproduction and use of text and/or pictorial content from Synergetics: Exploration in the Geometry of Thinking is for educational purpose and not for profit.

[Turtle]

R. Buckminster Fuller's SYNERGETICS

Fuller begins the section with a summary of human development of math, geometry, & structures. In regard to structure of thinking, he brings up the thesis of Malthus that humanity multiplies exponentially while life-support production rises linearly, then Fuller invokes Darwin's thesis of survival of the fittest. Fuller disagrees with both, and gives some definitions & conditions of structure in consideration of our ever increasing strength-to-weight ratio of materials.

Originally Posted by Fuller

Structures are complexes of visible or invisible physical events interacting to produce stable patterns. A structural system divides Universe into all Universe outside the structural system (macrocosm) and all Universe inside the structural system (microcosm).

Originally Posted by Fuller

Gravity is the inwardly cohering force acting integratively on all systems. Radiation is the outwardly disintegrating force acting divisively upon all systems.

000.114 All structural systems are comprised of tension and compression components. ...

Originally Posted by Fuller

As of the 1970s the human mind has developed a practical tensile structuring capability of 600,000 p.s.i. The means of accomplishing this new and overwhelming structural strength has become entirely invisible. Fully 99 percent of humanity has as yet no idea that this increase in tensile capability has come about or how it came about or why it works.

I'll leave off this post with this Fuller observation and return to the section in the next post with some assertions of 'hard' geometry.

Originally Posted by Fuller

The fact that 99 percent of humanity does not understand nature is the prime reason for humanity's failure to exercise its option to attain universally sustainable physical success on this planet. The prime barrier to humanity's discovery and comprehension of nature is the obscurity of the mathematical language of science. Fortunately, however, nature is not using the strictly imaginary, awkward, and unrealistic coordinate system adopted by and taught by present-day academic science....

[Turtle]

When I first read Synergetics 2, it had been out a couple years, and I did not have Synergetics 1 at the same time, which I had read 5 years earlier when it came out. Whether Applewhite & Fuller left material out of Synergetics 1 in consideration of keeping the size down, or reader reaction prompted the second volume, I can't say.

Coming to the final paragraphs in the humans in universe section, Fuller makes a strong comparison of his geodesic geometry with the familiar Cartesian divisioning of space. (boldings mine) Having looked ahead some, the logical justifications & proofs are forthcoming, and repeated. ...

Originally Posted by Bucky

Nature's continuous self-regeneration is 100 percent efficient, neither gaining nor losing any energy. Nature is not employing the three dimensional, omniinterperpendicular, parallel frame of the XYZ axial coordinates of academic science, nor is nature employing science's subsequently adopted gram/centimeter/second weight/area/time exponents. Nature does not operate in parallel. She operates in radiational divergence and gravitational convergence. She grows outwardly by omniintertriangulated structuring from nuclei.
...
Nature is inherently eight-dimensional, and the first four of these dimensions are the four planes of symmetry of the minimum structure of Universe-the omnitriangulated, equi-vector-edge tetrahedron. In respect to the conceptual pre-time-size tetrahedron's volume taken as unity 1, with its six unit-vector-edge structure, the always conceptual-independent-of-size family of primitive, pre-time-size, least complex polyhedra have the following exact volumes-the vector-triangulated cube 3, the octahedron 4, the rhombic triacontahedron 5, and the rhombic dodecahedron 6. When the size information is introduced, it occurs only as frequency of modular subdivision of each unit vector structuring of the primitive family's respective 1-, 2-, 3-, 4-, 5-, and 6-tetravolumes. Frequency to the third power, F3 , values then multiply the primitive, already-four-dimensional volumetric values. In physically realized time-size each has therefore 4 + 3 = 7 dimensions, but since each system is inherently independent in Universe and therefore has spinnability, one more dimensional factor is required, making a total of eight dimensions in all for experientially evidencing physical reality.
...
000.1271 To define the everywhere-and-everywhen-transforming cosmic environment of each and every system requires several more intercovarying system dimensions-planetary, solar, galactic, intergalactic. Because of the six positive and six negative degrees of freedom governing systems-within-systems intertransforming, we have 8 + 6 = 14 dimensional systems in cosmic relationship governance.
...
000.128 Nature is using this completely conceptual eight-dimensional coordinate system that can be comprehended by anyone. ...
...
000.129 Nature's coordinate system is called Synergetics-synergy means behavior of whole systems unpredicted by any part of the system as considered only separately. The eternally regenerative Universe is synergetic.

R. Buckminster Fuller's SYNERGETICS

[Turtle]

So far in the 6 days of this thread's life, the major objection to committing to read Synergetics that I am hearing from the grapevine, is a lack of time. While I am myself now full-on in (in for a penny, in for a pound? ), I did a little math of my own for some perspective on the time involved for others. In the 6 days, I have read & recommended others read ~20 pages of material in the hardcover 2 volume set of Synergetics. I counted all the words on a couple pages & find an average of ~ 430 words/page, giving ~8,600 words. I then timed myself & read 2 pages in 3 minutes, giving 1.5 minutes/page. 1.5 m/p*430 w/p = 645 w/m (your reading rate will vary). Then 8,600 words / 645 w/m = 13 1/3 minutes. Divide by 6 days and thats less than 3 minutes per day. Now that's a turtle's pace! ............

Tomorrow I'll have a 3 minute look at the next section in Fuller's exploration, Child as Explorer Scenario.

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Trimtab

[100.01-100.63 Child as Explorer Scenario]

100.010 Awareness of the Child: The simplest descriptions are those expressed by only one word. The one word alone that describes the experience "life" is "awareness." Awareness requires an otherness of which the observer can be aware. The communication of awareness is both subjective and objective, from passive to active, from otherness to self, from self to otherness. Awareness = self + otherness
Awareness = observer + observed

100.011 Awareness is the otherness saying to the observer, "See Me." Awareness is the observer saying to self, "I see the otherness." Otherness induces awareness of self. Awareness is always otherness inductive. The total complex of otherness is the environment.
100.012 Universe to each must be
All that is, including me.
Environment in turn must be
All that is, excepting me.

(Compare Secs. 264.10 and 1073.12.)

It's tomorrow here, and I suddenly feel like a stranger in a familiar land. Thirty-three years since I first read Synergetics, and it popped in my head while cogitating on that, that I learned of it from a piece on Bucky in the Whole Earth Catalog. Apparently some of this has lodged in my subconcious like a hairball. Then, Synergetics 2 about twenty-eight years ago, but without Synergetics 1. Then about 3 years ago, the online version with the volumes combined. Now this; a stranger in a familiar land. Both those early readings were of the paperback editions, and as I recall they were a larger format then these hardback I now have. I have already starting making notes in the margins & inserting multiple markers.

So, the reading 'Child as Explorer'. Last things first. The note in parentheses, "(Compare Secs. 264.10 and 1073.12.)", is the first of many examples of a skip-ahead that Fuller directs the reader to take. In this case, two branches, each an expansion of the idea or concept immediately preceding the parenthetic direction. Reading Synergetics cover to cover is not reading it front to back, but the course is well plotted.

Then to the subject matter of the reading & 'otherness'. The first thing that came to mind when I read the above, was Doug Hofstadter's writings on field/ground. Thinking back, I can't recall whether or not Doug ever brought Fuller up in Metamagical Themas or Godel, Escher, Bach. Could be another hairball though.

So that's all I got, and the only reading is what I quoted above.

[Turtle]

This field/ground orientation is a generalization. Again, and always for Fuller, 'generalization' means a principle that all specifc examples follow. Per the above parenthetical direction, we follow Fuller to an expansion on the theme: >>

Originally Posted by Fuller:Synergetics 264.01 (pg41 Synergetics 2 hardcover)

100.00 SYNERGY
A point is a something, a complex entity system, but an infratunable system. A point occurs as the first moment of awareness of a looming-into-tunability of any system in Universe. A point__or a noise__appears in an angularly determinable direction within the total omnidirectional spherical sphere of reference of the individual observer's sense- informed environment. It is oriented in respect to the observer's head-to-heel axis of reference in respect to which the direction from which the somethingness of infradiscrete tunability__as well as the non-tune-outability of the static__is emanating, as distinct from the nothingness of untuned-in, omnidirectional withinness and withoutness. (See Secs. 505.65, 505.74, and 527.25.)

Recall that the prefix intra- indicates within or inside of. The prefix omni- indicates all or everywhere. The suffix -ability indicates possession of a specified quality.

Again we follow the parenthetical direction and read 505.65

Originally Posted by Bucky:Synergetics 505.65 (pg116 Synergetics 2 hardcover)

500.00 CONCEPTUALITY
505.65 An area is a nothingness. A plurality of areas are views of nothingness through separate frames. A point is a somethingness. A line is a relationship between two somethingnesses. An enlarged, apparently single somethingness may prove to be resolvable into a plurality of somethingnesses between which the lines of interrelationship fence off the nothingness into a plurality of separately viewable nothingnesses. Points are unresolvable, untunable somethingnesses occurring in the twilight zone between visible and supravisible experience. (See Secs. 262.02 and 264.01)

Here we find parenthetical back-references to the sections that delivered us. Gotta love that. I'm marking the books to record these back references. So then, back to the first parenthetical trunk which next directs us to 505.74 for more on developing the geometric basis Fuller is instructing us on, which is the point.

Originally Posted by Fuller:Synergetics:505.74:(pg117 hardcover)

500.00 CONCEPTUALITY
The observer and the observed constitute two points differentiated against an area of nothingness with an inherent interrelationship line of awareness running between the two points. (See Sec. 264.01.) Thus there is a minimum set of four awareness aspects of life:
the observer;
the observed;
the line of interrelationship; and
the background nothingness against which the somethingness is observed.

That looks like lunch; smoke 'em if ya got 'em.

[Turtle]

Mmmmmm...Synergetics tastes like peppermint candy.

Returning to our trunk for another parenthetical direction from Bucky, it struck me this morning that they are in fact vectors both figuratively and literally. Anyway, returning to §100.012, the next vector is to §1073.12. It appears on page 442 in hardcover.

Originally Posted by Trimtab*

1073.12 All systems are conceptually differentiated out of Universe.
System + environment = Universe
Universe - system = environment

1000.00 OMNITOPOLOGY

Returning again, we have 2 pages of reading to bring us to the next set of parenthetical vectors. pgs 3 - 5 in hardover Synergetics 2, §100.013 - 100.020 >> 100.00 SYNERGY

*If I have not mentioned here, 'Trimtab' is what Mr. Fuller asks, engraved on his tombstone, that we call him. I will use it interchangeably with Bucky, Fuller, and other variations on his name.

[Turtle]

In the 3 minute reading of pgs 3 - 5 in hardover Synergetics 2, §100.013 - 100.020 >> 100.00 SYNERGY, I found 3 specifics worth noting.

First:

Originally Posted by 100.015;pg4

The brain distinguishes the new, first-time-event, special case experiences only by comparing them with the set of all its recalled prior cognitions.

Second: (braces mine)

Originally Posted by 100.17;pg4

They [children] have an innate urge first subjectively to sort out, find order in, integratively comprehend, and synergetically memory-bank their experience harvests as intertransformability system sets.

Third:

Originally Posted by 100.020;pg5

100.020 Human Sense Awareness INFRARED THRESHOLD
(Only micro-instrument-apprehensible)
Tactile: Preponderantly sensing the crystalline and triple-bonded atom-and- molecule state, including all the exclusively infraoptical frequency ranges of the electromagnetic wave spectrum's human receptivity from cold "solids" through to the limit degrees of heat that are safely (nonburningly) touchable by human flesh.

Olfactoral: Preponderantly sensing the liquid and double-bonded atom-and- molecule state, including all of the humanly tunable ranges of the harmonic resonances of complex chemical liquid substances.

Aural: Preponderantly sensing the gaseous and single-bonded atom-and- molecule state, including all ranges of humanly tunable simple and complex resonance harmonics in gasses.

Visual: Preponderantly sensing the radiantly deflecting-reflecting, unbonding- rebonding, atom-and-molecule energy export states, including all ultratactile, humanly-tune-in-able, frequency ranges of electromagnetic wave phenomena.

ULTRAVIOLET THRESHOLD
(Only macro-instrument-apprehensible)
(See Secs. 267.02, 801.01-24, and 1053.85.)

The next reading parenthetical vector at 267.02, is a short table of equivalencies and a diagram of the human body orientation to Fuller's geometry. As a drawing is worth a thousand words, that's about our 3 minute limit. > ....

100.00 SYNERGY

Diagram: Fig. 267.02A-B

[Turtle]

Returning from the diagram to our trunk, the next parenthetical vector from 100.020 is to §801.01 through §801.24. This is the first parenthetical vector that takes us from volume 2, to volume 1 in the hardcover. The section runs 7 pages [pgs 435-441] and that ought to take care of the whole weekend's reading time allowance.

Sections 801.01 -801.24 further classifiy the human senses in relation to structure.

>> 800.00 OPERATIONAL MATHEMATICS